Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games
spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."
it's a different story for the producers of mainstream games who have no need of exposure whatsoever
I don't think that is entirely true. Why do game producers continue to make titles based off of the same tired-ass hollywood kids movies. How many games have you seen clutter the shelves at Wallmart, "Barbies Adventure in X" or "Comic Book X Action Game" or "SpongeBob's New X". Kids relatives, grandmothers, etc, continue to buy these games because of exposure. So saying mainstream games have no need whatsoever is a bit to closed minded. And if you contest those examples as not being mainstream, then what is mainstream? What the 'pro' gaming community deems quality? Well if thats your argument, then those games need even more exposure to sell, especially if they don't have some cookie-cutter Hollywood blockbuster to pound the IP into the heads of the masses. Mainstream needs exposure.
Remember the original Call of Duty? Fairly low key developer, but it was a bad-ass game, free demos were available online, the game received glowing reviews and gained a fan-base. There were dedicated servers, mods, etc. Then as it went mainstream, my personal opinion is that the quality went down. No dedicated servers. Rehashes of old maps being piece-mealed off ala the Sims series, and other blatant abuses of their mainstream status.
Counter Strike. Started of as a free mod. People loved it. Spread everywhere. Indie-devs were exposed to the mainstream through word of mouth. They didn't need massive advertising campaigns. And look at the games longevity. You don't see ads on television for Counter-Strike, and yet people still play on the dedicated servers. Compare that to Halo 2 for the original Xbox. Massive advertising from a 'mainstream producer'. And what do you get? Kicked off of your gaming experience once the company deems it 'unprofitable'. Sure they have to make money, but I am not arguing for money, but instead the longevity of longstanding, quality content. And generally, it comes from those who are not ruled by greed, control, and margins.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
a few of my buddies pirate games sometimes. but they usually end up buying the games because very often it is either very hard or impossible for them to get it to work online, which is where they play most of the time. so, basically, they pirate the game to see if they like it, and how well it works on there system, than, if it works well, and they like it (which is usually the case) they buy the game. so basically, it seems that if game companies made a demo (and a usuable demo, that was basically the full game with restrictions of some kind), they could cut down on some of the piracy. Like, Planetside, they had the entire game free for a while, but u could only level up to a certain point (level 6 if i remember, which isnt much, but it worked). and my friends and i played it for a while, and loved it, so we decided to pay for it so we could do more in the game, it just seems like a much smarter idea.
See, you have people like me who DO. For a classic example, Starcraft II. Starcraft II is a high-budget game, which Blizzard spent a lot of money marketting. All that is good. I was going to buy it. Here's what happened: I bought the thing, was confronted with a 36 hour download time, and used a version that I happened to have which was a torrented predownload. For reasons I still don't understand -- maybe it was regioning, whatever -- their DRM prevented me from using the game that day. I had to wait until July 28th, a day after it was released, to play it at all. On the release day, I'd tried numerous times to "authenticate" my copy, all of which failed. I went to my battle.net account, which claimed that I'd somehow activated too many copies. I called Blizzard and got hung up on numerous times with an "unfortunately, we're experiencing a high call volume" load of crap until I finally got through, at which point the hold time was 56 minutes. Now, I did the right thing. I bought the damned thing for $60. Blizzard's DRM caused a major screwup, which made me wish that I'd pirated it so at least it would work.
This is the reason that the FSF pushed so hard for Linux to be GPLv3'd; the FSF is more concerned about user freedom than about spreading the software as far and wide as possible as quickly as possible. This, however, is not the position that many open source developers take, as many felt that the use of Linux in TiVo meant both greater exposure (and hence more developers) and code being made available to others (i.e. TiVo's modifications to Linux). This is where free software philosophy and open source software philosophy diverge.
Palm trees and 8
Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought an older game. Just Cause. When I installed it, the DRM wasn't compatible with Windows 7 and there were no patches available, I had to go download a NOCD crack to play a game that I legitimately purchased.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano